


I Believe The Children Are Our Future

by l_cloudy



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times diplomatic fostering changed the history of Westeros.</p><p>(Or, the raised in different Houses AU. Five children, five families.<br/>Lyanna and the Martells; Bran with the Greyjoys; Cersei in Winterfell; Arianne and the Targaryens; Jon Snow in Oldtown.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Believe The Children Are Our Future

**1\. Lyanna Stark, House Martell**

Lya is barely six when Ned is sent away to the Vale, and she spends one entire week crying after he’s gone, begging for Father to bring her brother back.

He doesn’t; and the years pass, until Lyanna is about to turn nine and Ned comes home for a brief visit, looking so much taller than he’d last been, his voice different from how Lya remembered it. She knows enough about the world now to understand that Father will never allow Ned to stay, won’t ever dare slight Lord Arryn in such a way; but still, she has to try.

“Can I go South with Ned, then?” she asks instead; and, Lord Rickard decides, there is wisdom to the idea, even if Lyanna meant it as a joke.

He considers House Tully and House Lannister but, in the end, is the Lady of Dorne he writes to. Her daughter will marry the Crown Prince, or so has been rumored since King Aerys refused Tywin Lannister’s offer, and the North has never had ties with Dorne before.

Besides, he thinks, his wild daughter might like the sands.

Lyanna leaves with Ned, as she wanted, but she takes the longer way, to the desert and the rocks of Sunspear, and to the new life that is waiting for her there. They barely see each other from that day, once at Riverrun for Brandon’s betrothal and not long after in King’s Landing for Prince Rhaegar’s wedding; but Lyanna’s letters are as regular as a Myrish clock, to Ned and Brandon and occasionally even to Ben, telling her brothers of the Water Gardens and stuffed peppers and the silken trousers that are the latest fashion.

She writes of a endless Summer, of marvels she’d never thought could exist, and how she has been learning how to use a spear, she writes, to Prince Doran’s amusement.

Lya also, occasionally, writes about Oberyn Martell. Ned doesn’t really notice, which fine; and Brandon does but Lyanna knows that he won’t make fun of her, so that is fine, too.

* * *

 

**2\. Bran Stark, House Greyjoy**

House Lannister joins forces with Aerys during Robert’s Rebellion, and Jon Arryn is the one who proposes to ally with the Greyjoys, then.

“The Ironmen are raiders,” he explains to his two foster sons. “They will do it, if only for the possibility to sack the Westerlands while Tywin’s army is not there.”

It goes, frankly, even better than they would have expected. Ned doesn’t like it at first, calling Balon Greyjoy a pirate and a criminal, and his brothers an even worse lot; but he’s the one who started calling Robert _Your Grace_ first, and cannot do anything but obey.

“The krakens fight dirty, but is a dragon we need to kill,” it’s all he says; and the dragons have Lya, so Ned cannot quite find the heart to object. The war at sea is a bloody affair, every bit as dangerous and unforgivable as the battles they’re fighting in the riverlands; but it all ends with Robert’s hammer in Rhaegar’s chest at the battle of the Trident, and Ned wonders how will they manage to keep the Greyjoy under control now.

There is no possible alliance to be had through a wedding. Robert marries Cat’s sister Lysa once everything is over, like he’d promised to do in the case of Lyanna’s death, a clause of Hoster Tully’s that had Ned almost change his opinion of the man. Robert is still mourning Lya, almost as much as Ned does, for all that he never really knew her; but they are still brothers now, somehow, and this takes off the edge of it. The Greyjoy matter, though, is still on the plate; and is only solved by Lord Arryn asking Lord Balon for heir to remain in King’s Landing. Rodrick Greyjoy is made Master of Ships, but this doesn’t stop the Kraken Lord from asking for a son of Robert’s in return.

In the end, Ned is the one who bends, because that’s always been his role. A lord could not ask the king for nothing, especially not a son; but the Lord of Winterfell, on the other hand…

It seemed easy, then, to pledge the life of a child who was not yet born.

Brandon Stark is put on a ship to Pyke the day of his sixth birthday, and only meets his father three times after that before Ned Stark is killed, beheaded on the steps of the Gran Sept by Queen Lysa’s order. There are rumors that it had really been Littlefinger’s doing, the shrewd Master of Coin who some says was the queen’s lover.

It doesn’t matter.

The North rises in rebellion and Balon, who has always toyed with the idea of creating a kingdom of his own, follows the war with interest. Brandon Stark, the Sea Wolf as the Greyjoys’ men call him, is the one to send a letter to the brother he hasn’t seen in so long. When Robb’s right hand man, the Bastard of Winterfell, arrives in Pyke, he’s received with a smile and a proposal to renew the old alliance.

He says yes.

* * *

 

**3\. Cersei Lannister, House Stark**

Cersei is ten when Lord Tywin promises her that she’ll be a queen one day; and it’s not quite a fortnight later that King Aerys crushed all her newfound hopes with a mocking laugh. “But I do have another son,” the king adds, still laughing. “Your girl might suit him well enough.”

Viserys Targaryen is barely old enough to walk, and Cersei would be an old maid by the time they could marry. Had the king not offered, Tywin might have thought the alliance worth the waiting. Had the king not offered, things would have gone differently; but the dismissal in Aerys’s words is close enough to contempt that the Lord of the Rock finds himself refusing.

If his grandchildren will not rule over a kingdom, he decides later that day, there’s no reason why they cannot have half of it, at least.

Tywin Lannister writes to Rickard Stark before Lord Tully does; and history changes.

Cersei is ten when she leaves the westerlands for Winterfell, and five-and-teen when she exchanges her crimson cloak for a grey one under the heart-tree, the way the northmen do. Jaime is there, of course, the way he’s come to visit her every year; but this time his betrothed is with him, the Tully girl Brandon might have married had things gone differently.

Eddard Stark is there as well, the new good-brother she’s only met once before; and his friend Robert Baratheon, who seems too eager to tear at her clothes, even in the presence of his own betrothed. Cersei has heard only good things of Lord Baratheon from what Brandon told her of Eddard’s letters, and nothing but bored contempt from Lyanna, and she is more inclined to believe her new good-sister. Lyanna is pleasant enough company, if a little unpolished, and over the years she has shown herself a friend and taught Cersei all the things she wasn’t allowed to do at Casterly Rock.

She leaves the North again one moon’s turn after her marriage, for a whole year. They travel to Highgarden and Oldtown and attend Lord Whent’s tournament; and Cersei decides that she has missed the South, but not overly much.  Brandon is as charming after their wedding as he was before, with laughing eyes and a handsome smile, and Cersei can almost ignore the rage she feels when occasionally he finds another bed for the night; especially after the master informs her that she is with child.

All in all, life is as good as it could ever be.

They are on the way to Casterly Rock for Jaime’s wedding when they hear about Lyanna; and that is the last time Cersei Stark sees her husband alive. Her son, her _only_ son, is born with a price on his head, already Lord of Winterfell two days after Brandon’s death. Cersei isn’t told about it until after the birth, after she lays her eyes on her son for the first time and names him Willam, a Stark family name that sounds Southron enough for her tastes, because she will not name him for the dead.

The child has her green eyes and features and Brandon’s hairs, and one day will rule the North.

She will make sure of it.

* * *

 

**4\. Arianne Martell, House Targaryen**

There hasn’t been a House Targaryen since Arianne was a little girl, only the exiled king and Daenerys Stormborn and Ser Willem Darry.

Still, it is enough.

She meets the boy she is to marry for the first time when she is two-and-ten; two years later than she would have had her mother not interfered. In the end, though, they finally meet; in Tyrosh and not in Braavos where the marriage contract had been signed, because Ser Willem was forced to leave the city years ago.

“After I meet your uncle,” the old knight tells her, “some of the Usurper’s men must have realized where we were living.” He tells her of knives in the night and a robbery attempt and of servants slowly poisoning him. Queen Cersei’s men, Ser Willam says, and Arianne has heard enough stories of Lannister cruelty to believe him. “Had the Prince not sent his own men…”

Ser Willem lets his voice fade, and Arianne shivers at the thought. What would have happened, she wonders, to Viserys and his sister had Ser Willem died? Living on the streets like common beggars.

She wonders who she would have married, then. After meeting Viserys, she can think of no one else.

Her Prince – King, she tells herself, he will be king and she will be his queen one day – is everything she would have expected from a Targaryen, so different from the boys she’s met at her father’s court. He is as impetuous as Oberyn and as poised as her father, as mischievous as Tyene and a better liar than even Lady Nym. Arianne, who is a terrible liar herself, has always considered it an incredibly useful skill.

She remains in Tyrosh for six months, six months of practicing a language she has never spoken before and eating food she did not know could exist; six months that are so much more different from the life she has lived before.

“I am glad I came,” Arianne tells Viserys the day she is to leave. Glad that Father’s reasoning won over Mother’s pleas, glad that she was given this opportunity, glad that Uncle Oberyn and Ser Willem will ensure that the boy in front of her will one day become a good king, and a great man.

He smiles then, and his voice is soft enough that she has to lean in closer to hear. Arianne doesn’t mind.

“I’m glad you came, too,” Viserys says. “I cannot imagine how my life would be now, without you.”

Arianne smiles back at him. “You’ll never need to.”

* * *

 

**5\. Jon Snow, House Hightower**

Seven men went to the Tower of Joy, seven against three; and only two survived.

Or so Ned had thought at first, in the heat of the battle, blood pumping through his veins. After, when everything has been said and done, his sister’s body is cooling in bloody bed while the sun rises in the east and Ned goes out to find the White Bull, not quite as dead as he’d assumed.

“Ser,” he finds himself saying, one hand going to his sword. The man has grey hair and a wounded leg, but is still the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

“Lord Stark,” Ser Gerold replies, his voice unsteady. “Are you going to kill me?”

He should, Ned knows. But it is one thing to kill a man, a _knight_ , in battle; and another to put him down in cold blood like a rabid animal.

“You knew,” he tells Ser Gerold. “About… Lyanna’s child.”

The man nods, but Ned doesn’t even see him, keeps going. “You knew and still tried to stop me. Did you think I would harm Lyanna’s son, my own flesh and blood?”

Ser Gerold doesn’t say anything, merely looks Ned straight in the eyes; and he knows they are both thinking of Robert. _Dragonspawn._

“I don’t want to kill you,” Ned says, realizing he never answered. “Or him. I promised Lya…”

“I promised…”

Gerold Hightower makes his way to Oldtown, somehow, and Robert is too crushed by Lyanna’s death to realize that the White Bull had been there, that Ned must have been the one who let him go. The former Lord Commander is never pardoned and never asks for it, but simply forgotten, a stain on the otherwise pristine White Book. Even Robert has the sense not to ask for his death, not when the peace is so fragile and the Reach still so much richer than the lands where the war was fought.

Time goes by, simply; as it always does.

Eddard Stark goes back to Winterfell with the boy he claims as his bastard son. The truth, he made Ser Gerold promise, will never be spoken of until the day the child becomes a man, as he’s promised Lyanna; and after that… _well, Ser Gerold is old_ , Ned finds himself thinking, and Baelor Hightower was a good friend of both Rhaegar and Arthur Dayne, but he would never risk another war. _It will come to nothing_ , he tells himself; wishing he could believe it.

Ned buys the silence of the man he did not want to kill with the promise of blood, and Jon Snow is nine years old when he’s sent to squire for Ser Baelor in Oldtown. The boy has never been at more than one day’s ride from Winterfell before, and clearly regrets leaving his brothers, but knows his place in the world well enough and welcomes the opportunity. _I’ll make you proud, Father_ , he says, and Ned can almost feel his heart tighten.

Jon Snow’s life in the Hightower is a complicated one. It’s the loss of whatever privilege he has known, and a renewed faith in abilities he didn’t know he could have. It’s a life in a place of wonders and loneliness, of summer wine and courtly songs and just how crude his name might sound on a lady’s tongue.

It’s afternoon spent in a dusty room with an old master and an old knight, waiting for _something_ , whatever it might be. The room is dark and the only candle doesn’t burn, and Ser Gerold only coughs and looks sideways in his direction. “One day, my boy,” he tells him. “One day.”

But war comes before the day arrives, and Jon becomes a orphan and a knight all in a fortnight, and tries not to think too much  that he might be fighting against his brother’s army soon enough. He doesn’t, in the end; because the Stranger and Walder Frey take Robb first, and Jon’s heart is heavy in his chest all the way home.

He comes back to Oldtown to find Ser Gerold smiling, and a glass candle burning in a room that was no longer dark.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Live For Just These Twenty Years (the wolves in sheep's clothing remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1431142) by [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k)




End file.
